I’M FREE!!!! (somewhat)

Hey everyone!!! As you may have heard, I was released from Logan Correctional (ha!) Center in central Illinois last Friday. I’m free from the actual prison, but stuck in a nicer but larger prison called Illinois–waiting for my interstate parole to California to be approved, or denied (Earth forbid). The DoC placed me in a homeless shelter, which is sucky but not as bad as you or I might think. California has to make a decision on my parole by April 21st. I did 685 days (!) in minimum and medium-security institutions, so I can handle this.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU to everyone for their support, letters, books, and kindness. It raised my spirits in my direst of hours. I was just blown away by it all. I got letters from people I haven’t talked to in YEARS. I made new friends through correspondences in the joint. Incredible.

It’s quite depressing, because truly the worst part of prison was being away from my loved ones–Becca, our pit/boxer/angel Rikki, mom, lil bro and sis, two dads, all my friends–and I’m free, but I still can’t be with them. It’s a cruel, idiotic, senseless, inept, miserable fucking system, culture, but we’re stuck with it for now. This just motivates me, and hopefully you, to work even harder to help build a new, beautiful, compassionate, peaceful, harmonious, and truly sustainable world–and we’ll use the ashes of this wretched culture to fertilize it.
I have to appreciate what I do have. I’m writing fiction and memoirs again after a 4+ month hiatus due to debilitating pain in my nerve-damaged knees and psyche, depression, and my psychotic conniving violent environment.

But I’m back! Great books–a library five minutes away by foot (well, feet, I don’t hop on one!) And the other day I tasted FRESH TOMATO, cucumber, spinach, pecans, mixed greens, and olives for the first time, literally the FIRST TIME, in 22 and a half months. Little things and their simple, understated glory. Ya dig?

Sorry for the length (hey, never thought I’d say THAT–am I right, girls who also never thought I’d say that??), but I wanted to get all this out there. I’ll leave you with this little blip I wrote on the bus the morning I was released:

It’s a veritable blitzkrieg of sensory and emotional input, an onslaught of beauty and joy. Possibility flings itself upon me.